‘I know.’ She held up the statue. ‘But at least we can secure this—’
She broke off as she saw dust motes falling through the flashlight beams, the first few specks quickly joined by more, and more, drifting from the tent’s roof. ‘What’s doing that?’ Eddie demanded. He glanced at the Ark. ‘We haven’t bloody brought down the fury of God and the wrath of sixty special-effects people, have we?’
‘It’s outside,’ said Jared. A deep rumbling sound gradually rose in intensity.
Still holding the statue, Nina hurried back through the veil. More dust was falling in the tent’s outer room, scraps of rotted fabric dropping to the floor. She pushed through the curtain into the throne chamber. The noise grew louder—
The light coming through the giant opal in the ceiling suddenly flickered. A moment later, a shadow passing over the crack above briefly plunged the room into darkness. Then the illumination returned to its spectacular norm, but the bass rumble continued.
‘It’s a chopper!’ Eddie said. The aircraft had gone right overhead, coming in to land on the mountain above them.
‘Cross,’ said Nina. ‘It’s Cross!’
‘How do you know?’ asked Jared.
‘Because who else would it be? This always frickin’ happens to us!’
Eddie drew the Desert Eagle. ‘Looks like I’ll find out if this thing’s as good as my Wildey.’
Jared produced his own, smaller gun. ‘We need to get out of here.’
‘We’ll never get clear,’ Nina realised. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to climb down the cliff and back to the jeep in time. And even if we could, they’ve got a helicopter! We can’t outrun them.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Chuck that thing in the sinkhole,’ Eddie suggested, nodding at the angel. ‘They won’t have brought scuba gear. It’ll take ’em ages to find it, if they ever do.’
‘Yes, but we’ll probably be dead!’ the Israeli objected.
‘And they might still find it,’ added Nina. ‘We don’t know how deep the sinkhole is — if it’s only ten feet, it won’t take them long to search the bottom.’
‘Then drop it off the bridge down the big shaft,’ Eddie persisted.
‘But if it breaks, then as far as Cross is concerned the angel has been released, and he wins.’
‘What, then?’ he demanded, exasperated. ‘We can’t run, there’s nowhere to hide the thing, and if we smash it, that’s the same as letting him get it? What the bloody hell are we supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know!’ She turned her eyes to the refracted daylight coming through the ceiling as the noise of the helicopter settled… then began to die down. It had landed, the pilot shutting off the engines. ‘You’re SAS,’ she told Eddie, turning back to the two men, ‘and Jared, you’re Mossad — what would you do?’
The question galvanised the younger man. ‘They’ll have seen our truck — it’s probably what made them land — so they know we’re here. They’ll expect an ambush.’
Eddie nodded in agreement. ‘We’ll have to decoy them.’
‘Yeah. But how?’
The Englishman looked back at the tent. ‘If Cross is such a Bible-basher, he’ll know what that is, and what’s inside. We need to keep his attention on it.’ A moment’s thought, then: ‘There’s an app for that.’
Simeon swung down from the lip of the sinkhole into the sheltered cave beneath, whipping up his MP5 sub-machine gun and sweeping it across the entrances. Nobody moved within them. He brought his left forefinger to the trigger of the M203 grenade launcher mounted under the weapon’s barrel, ready to fire a shrapnel-filled high-explosive round at any hint of activity.
Still nothing stirred. He took cover beside the right-most opening as more of his men dropped down and spread out to check the other archways. ‘Clear,’ one soon reported. The others gave the same message.
Simeon cast a wary eye into the underground chamber before moving to look up to the surface. ‘Nobody here.’
Cross, Anna and Dalton gazed back down at him. ‘Good,’ said the cult leader. He lowered himself to the cave, Anna following. ‘What have we got?’
‘Four entrances. I don’t know which they took.’
Cross surveyed the arches, then pointed at the left-most. ‘That one, with the symbol of the twenty-four Elders. Prepare to move in.’
‘Hey!’ came an aggrieved shout from above. ‘You going to leave me up here?’
‘Simeon, Norvin, help Mr Dalton down,’ said Cross, the upward flick of his eyes as much a disparaging roll as an indication of the disgraced politician’s location. Simeon let out a sound of contempt, then he and the bodyguard took up positions to catch Dalton as he clumsily clambered over the edge.
Even with their support, the ex-president touched down with a thump. He shook himself free of them. ‘All right, I’m here,’ he announced. ‘Now, what’s the situation?’
‘They’re down there,’ Cross told him, going to the entrance. One of his men, a jut-jawed blond named Hatch, crouched to examine the floor; faint footsteps in the dust confirmed his leader’s statement.
‘And what else is down there?’
‘The angel, is all I can say for sure. Other than that…’ He regarded the symbol above the opening with intense curiosity, then signalled for his team to advance.
Simeon took point, Norvin behind him. The others followed in single file. They cautiously made their way up the sloping passage, listening for sounds of activity. But they heard none. It wasn’t until they reached the growths of mushrooms that Cross broke the silence. ‘Manna?’ he wondered in a whisper, pausing for a closer look.
‘Sir!’ Simeon hissed. ‘I heard voices — and there’s something up ahead.’
The mushrooms forgotten, Cross made his way to the front of the group, joining Simeon at the edge of the cenote. The cult leader aimed his flashlight into the depths, revealing water a long way below. His right-hand man, meanwhile, used his own light to track the rope across the rickety bridge. ‘Through there,’ he said, seeing the open doorway.
‘I hear them,’ Cross murmured. Two people were speaking; the words were indistinct, but one voice was male… and the other female. ‘It’s Wilde.’
Simeon raised his MP5, aiming the grenade launcher at the doorway, but Cross pushed it down. ‘No! You might damage the angel. We need it intact.’
Anna listened to the voices. The discussion seemed casual, unworried. ‘They don’t know we’re here.’
‘It could still be an ambush,’ her husband warned. ‘And I don’t like the look of this bridge.’
‘They got across it; so can we,’ said Cross. He tested the rope. It held.
Dalton squeezed past the other team members. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Simeon growled. Dalton twitched in anger, but the African-American went on: ‘They’re on the other side of this shaft. We’ve got to get across without letting them know we’re here.’
‘Norvin, you go over first,’ Cross told his bodyguard. ‘If the tunnel on the far side is clear, cover it while the rest of us follow.’
Norvin nodded, slinging his MP5 and taking hold of the rope. He sidestepped across the bridge. His companions watched with growing anxiety, a few stifled gasps escaping when the structure swayed under his weight, but after steadying himself he was able to continue on to firm ground. He quickly readied his gun and checked the tunnel, then signalled that the way was clear.
‘Maybe you should wait here,’ Cross suggested to Dalton.
‘Like hell,’ Dalton replied. ‘I want to see the look on Wilde and Chase’s faces when we take the angel from them.’
‘As you wish.’ The white-clad man turned his back on him, waiting for Simeon to cross before starting his own journey. ‘Come over after Anna. Hatch, watch out for him.’